There are 8B people in the world, but only a handful of countries with good rule of law, good universities, and businesses which support local productivity; some countries maintain low unemployment because of immigration to a handful of productivity centers.
Better than cramming 8B world population into a handful of countries, there needs to be more investment in local rule of law, local infrastructure, local R&D, local education, local universities, and local businesses. Successful countries have a strong sense of community and culture, and so are less likely to become corrupt.
For some places, does that mean more open source investment and buying locally? I think so. Rule of thumb should be buy local as much as you can.
Why am I saying this now? Because the reason behind the recent mass layoffs isn’t AI, it’s increased cost of doing business due to US tariffs. But no one will say that because of fear of retaliation.
The effect from American job losses will trickle out as American consumer demand lessens, and then there will be layoffs in other countries at massive scale. So I can only conclude that the parasitic relationship some economies have developed with Big Cap is the problem. Your main import shouldn’t be workers. Build local, buy local, stay local. But that will only result in a better quality of life on average if there’s rule of law and manageable levels of corruption.
Maybe some of this means making things more low tech. Are big caps ruining the world more than the value they provide? I am undecided. Maybe only Big Pharma has been useful for improving quality of life on a global scale.